EHR solutions facilitate documenting patient data in the form of electronic health records that are both economical and environmentally friendly. The data in EHRs which is accessible to authorized health care providers is critical in improving patient safety, quality of care, and offering evidence-based treatment. Hence, it is essential that people working with the help of hospital management software and EHRs understand the various terms used in EHRs. Here, we walk you through a few important and widely used terms in the documentation of patient data in electronic health records.

• Electronic health record – It is a comprehensive set of patient data inclusive of demographic, clinical, social, and financial aspects of a single patient stored in an electronic form that can be accessed by authorized persons across multiple health organizations.
• Certified electronic health record – A certified electronic health record is a health record that has been certified by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). The certification is awarded after reviewing and determining that the EHR is compliant with the technological capability, functionality, and security standards as required by ONC–Authorized Testing and Certification Body.
• Electronic medical record – This is a patient’s health record stored digitally that can be accessed by persons of a single healthcare organization.
• Meaningful Use – It is a federal incentive program by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that provides guidelines and regulations for healthcare providers with the minimum requirements that they must adhere to in the use of EHRs in order to be qualified for the payments.
• Health Information Exchange – This is a process through which patients and various people involved in providing healthcare (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, radiologists, etc.) get to access a patient’s critical medical information digitally across organizations as per nationally recognized standards. Sharing of a patient’s data through Health information exchange (HIE) facilitates high-quality and safe patient care at an increased speed while reducing costs.
• Interoperability – The ability of various health information systems within an organization or across multiple organizations to effectively deliver healthcare is referred to as interoperability.

These are some of the basic and most commonly used terms in the implementation of EHRs. Healthcare providers should choose the best EHR solutions providers to maximize their meaningful use purpose and implement EHRs with the highest levels of safety and accuracy. Choose nimble, one of the best providers of EHR Solutions in Hyderabad for your EHR requirements.

What is required at these times is mending the systems of electronic health records in totality going beyond interface issues and improving interoperability. The rebuild, process should capably address other issues that have been exposed by the pandemic crisis. The repair process of the electronic health records must allow focus on proactive management of health instead of enabling mere reactive sick care. As of now, the EHR systems are allowing us to maintain electronic health records that effectively keep track of the experiences of the patients regarding their health, i.e. they are tracking what already happened to the patients. But, to cope with pandemic crises and be ready for such tough situations ahead, we must incorporate the health aspect by introducing features in electronic health records that can help providers plan what they wish to happen in terms of health. Designing the EHR solutions should happen after considering such aspects which help in planning and tracking these ideas.

When electronic health records are developed as plan-centric, they would have a range of healthcare plans that can address a variety of patient health issues. For example, plans should differ for people who have large families and people who live all alone. Similarly, plans should be designed in such a way that an individual with more than one health issue is provided healthcare accordingly by bringing all relevant specialists under one plan and addressing the patients’ comorbidities collectively. This is significant because a person with comorbidities can develop serious health issues owing to multiple factors and healthcare providers should be provided with readily available data that can help them address such issues efficiently and save the patient from grave consequences.

Further, to help patients with comorbidities, the EHR solutions must allow interoperability of their plan as they may see different specialists and at different healthcare facilities. Simultaneously, the plan must keep all the specialists concerned updated about the patient’s changing conditions and remind all the users of the plan about the due or upcoming activities that are critical to the patient’s healthcare as a proactive measure.

The kind of EHR systems that are required by the healthcare providers must enable the physicians and other healthcare staff to analyze patient data accurately to discover any safety issues that a patient may have and identify unusual clinical findings to act upon appropriately in grave situations that are totally new or unexpected as in the case of the coronavirus disease side effects. Healthcare providers must invest in the right EHR solutions to provide the best healthcare to their patients.

To prepare the public for such crises in the future and tackle the present situation effectively, thorough research has to be taken up along with providing required resources to the public for their safety. This requires building a robust and scalable infrastructure that can process large volumes of data quickly and efficiently. Electronic health records (EHRs) have been a valuable resource in analyzing and mitigating the challenges of COVID-19.

COVID-19 is a severe respiratory disease caused by infection due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus leading to a wide range of disease severity with varied presentation and organ system involvement. To reduce the impact of prevalent misery, morbidity, and mortality, it is required that vast-scale scientific efforts are implemented. Although many people are seeing similarities between this pandemic and the previous pandemics, one major differentiator is the availability and use of several data sources including electronic health records.

The data pulled from electronic health records can help authorities and various parties concerned through –

• disease surveillance
• contract tracing
• risk evaluation
• real-time monitoring
• early detection of disease
• prevention and management of severe disease
• identification of risk factors
• recognition of complications

Further, electronic health records also facilitate by providing insights into the pathophysiologic process and help by serving as a platform for the utilization of artificial intelligence for the early detection, prevention, and effective management of pandemics.

To monitor outbreaks of infectious diseases, active surveillance, and contact tracing is implemented. Instead of going through a complex and time-consuming process of manually tracing the people who came into close contact with infected people, technological advancements can be leveraged that facilitate the use of several apps that use the mobile device data linked to the electronic health records. This can be utilized efficiently by educating the public to enter their data immediately into these electronic health records-connected apps when they test positive for the disease. This helps to alert other users if they were in proximity to the infected person during a particular period before testing positive.

Risk stratification is also a significant aspect of studying and mitigating the pandemic crisis. By deploying certain algorithms across electronic health record systems, government authorities and healthcare providers assess the number of comorbidities, multi-organ complications, and disease severity in people affected by the coronavirus disease. Such a kind of assessment of risk can facilitate early interventions in people with a high risk of disease severity and those who need ventilator support thereby reducing the risk of disease progression and mortality.

Further, the use of data from electronic health records can be efficiently used to understand the correlation between age comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, etc. to predict the risk of death due to coronavirus disease. It has been observed that aged patients with multiple comorbidities are at a high risk of severe illness due to coronavirus. The integration of certain algorithms with the EHR systems can facilitate the early detection and management of complications developed including myocardial injury, myocardial infarction, malignant arrhythmias, thromboembolic disease, etc.

It can be clearly understood that electronic health records consist of vital data elements that can help in responding to the pandemic crisis efficiently. Data from electronic health records can enormously help the authorities in making public health decisions and support various stakeholders including clinicians, researchers, administrators, and the public with authentic and real-time data. Healthcare facilities must pay attention to maintaining their electronic health records timely and accurate. For flawless and timely records, they can outsource the job to nimble, an EHR services provider in Hyderabad.

When the right EHR solutions are chosen and implemented efficiently, the facilities can save money, and the healthcare staff’s time and communicate effectively with various parties involved. Even in such a scenario, some healthcare practices are unable to understand the significance of EHRs and are implementing some generic software to manage their data and operations and thereby meet the government regulations without realizing the need for a customized EHR system that caters to their unique needs. As a healthcare facility, you must know the pros and cons of employing EHRs so as to make the most of it. Here listed are some benefits and drawbacks of EHRs that you must consider while analyzing a particular EHR solution and adapting it for your facility.

Pros of EHRs:

• Financial benefits: The foremost benefit of implementing a certified EHR solution for your healthcare facility is that you can obtain financial incentives offered by Medicare and Medicaid by demonstrating ‘meaningful use’. Further, some other financial incentives can be achieved by documenting your compliance with value-based care initiatives.
• Time-saving benefits: By using appropriate EHRs that address your facility’s needs, you can get pre-designed templates that can save a lot of your employees’ time while keying in patient information. Whether your patient encounters are related to general practice or speciality services, the pre-designed templates help your staff to input accurate information as per the practice requirements and this will save a lot of time because duplication of the same work is eliminated where different types of information are required for different services.
• Patient-access benefits: By including the patient portal in your EHR system, you can boost patient engagement and simultaneously save your and their time because patient portals facilitate information input by patients themselves which they can do from the comfort of their home as well without waiting at the facility for long hours. Further, this facility eliminates the redundancy in filling multiple forms.

Cons of EHRs:

• Safety issues: Employing EHRs will require extra diligence on your part and especially, your IT department that handles the implementation and other processes of EHRs. Electronic health records contain extremely sensitive and personally identifiable information of scores of patients and it is your responsibility to maintain the safety and security of such information from criminal hackers. You must ensure that the system is secured with robust safety measures to comply with the required laws and to address contingencies such as server problems, natural disasters, etc.
• Timely updates and best practices: Another important aspect that needs your attention is getting timely updates and best practices from the EHR solutions provider. Without regular updates and support from the software developer, you may face challenges when you upscale your operations or when you have technical glitches.

After carefully analyzing all these pros and cons of EHRs, you must prudently invest in the right EHR solution that the developer upgrades in accordance with industry best practices and government regulations. Choose an EHR solutions provider who has a proven track record in the industry and provides the best services.

Clinical Research

To understand the use of EHRs in clinical research, we must understand what clinical research is. Clinical research is related to the study of health and illness in people, ways to prevent illnesses and methods of treating various illnesses and it involves human participation to verify the safety and effectiveness of various healthcare tools such as medicines, equipment, and treatment regimens when these are used by people. Clinical research focuses on improving the knowledge of illnesses, diagnoses and new treatments to enhance the quality of healthcare.

As clinical research is involved with the health and wellness of people it needs to conform to various rules and regulations which may pose some challenges such as:

• Approval delays: Healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are tightly regulated and complying with regulations is a big challenge making timely and cost-effective clinical trials and research complicated. Approval delay is one of the top challenges faced by the clinical research fraternity. The chances of the simplest and fundamental steps getting complicated are more when data isn’t recorded and organized correctly.
• Recruitment: Another challenge in clinical trials and research is, recruiting and retaining the right number of participants to complete a trial. Further, depending on the participant access and infrastructure the site selection has to be done.
• Data management: Monitoring the clinical trial sites and capturing the data accurately is critical for clinical trial management. If the data is handled manually with spreadsheet methods, it leads to challenges in updating information quickly and collating data from multiple resources.

In the present scenario where new illnesses and diseases are harming mankind tremendously, it becomes critical to identify the new illnesses and their treatment without much delay. It is here that the role of electronic health records comes to the fore. Although the data collected through EHR systems of various healthcare facilities are being used for the purpose of clinical research for a long time, it is not being utilized effectively. It is understood that with better and optimal utilization of data collected through the EHR systems, organizations and governments can identify health issues in a better way and respond to them with greater efficacy. Moreover, by deriving clinical trial data from electronic health records, the clinical research industry can benefit from cost reduction for direct data entry and on-site monitoring visits and travel expenses.

• Data migration: The most critical aspect while making a shift to a new EHR system is data migration. You must ensure that all the present data is migrated without any loss of data due to the differences in the way data is stored, organized and retrieved. Your new software can have different features and models that are not available in the old one, so mapping data from the old system to the new system could be challenging.
• Data storage: Managing data storage is also an aspect that you must think about carefully. If you have been using your own local servers until now, you may consider using a cloud solution for the new EHR solution. Cloud solutions could be beneficial when you want to scale up your operations and would need better storage capacity. Whichever solution you choose for your data storage, you must ensure that it’s robust and highly secured to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and its privacy rule.
• Certification: You must know that EHR software must be certified if you want to claim reimbursements for patients covered under Medicare and Medicaid. The government’s policies and procedures aim at improving healthcare facilities’ efficiency and lowering the cost of providing quality healthcare; for this, it’s essential that facilities use the latest EHR software and comply with all the regulatory requirements. So, to avoid the risk of denials of Medicare and Medicaid claims, you must incorporate certified software from the best EHR solutions providers.

If you want to make the switch regarding your EHR software, you must carefully consider all these aspects of appropriate data migration without any hassles, robust data storage facilities, and implementation of certified software. Further, you must be ready to invest a considerable amount of your time in understanding the requirements of the switch over and working with the EHR solutions provider to clearly understand and address the bottlenecks in the process of migration to new software.

Another key aspect of the migration process is that you may be unable to access patient data during the transition phase due to limitations in hardware facilities and bandwidth capacity. Hence, you must make appropriate arrangements to tackle this problem in coordination with your IT team and the EHR solutions providers. Choose the best EHR system for your facility that can support you efficiently for a long time even when you scale up your operations.

Efficiently managed EHR systems save the precious time and money resources of the facilities and help them communicate efficiently among the various parties in healthcare such as hospitals, referring physicians, and insurers. However, there are yet many facilities that are using generic software to store and manage critical patient data not realizing the benefits of authentic EHR solutions that are tailored to the medical staff and facility needs. Here are some significant aspects healthcare providers should understand before investing and installing an EHR system.

• Financial benefits: To demonstrate ‘meaningful use’ and avail of the financial incentives offered by the government, choose a certified EHR system.
• Time-saving benefits: Electronic health records come with the advantage of pre-designed templates that promote and ensure the input of accurate patient information. This is time-saving for both general practice and specialty practice encounters as employees working with the system know what and where information has to be input and the procedure is performed seamlessly.
• Access benefits: Another excellent way to save time and promote patient engagement is to introduce the patient portal in the EHR system that lets the patients to key in their information by themselves. This can be done from anywhere reducing the need for entering redundant data by the employees. Moreover, the patient portals can be really helpful in crises when the patient is unable to visit the facility or needs to pull past information. Electronic health records have been tremendously helpful in the COVID-19 pandemic crisis where patients could fill their information from the comfort of their homes instead of spending time in fear at the facilities’ waiting rooms.

However, along with the benefits come some issues that need to be addressed to implement EHR solutions effectively. The issues that need facilities’ focus are safety and timely updates of the software. With the benefits of technology come the issues of safety and security. Safety plays a critical role in EHRs because they deal with the storage and management of sensitive patient information that needs to be safeguarded with extreme diligence of the IT department of the facility and the EHR services providers. The patient information has to be protected from outsiders, especially criminal hackers with excellent security standards and tools. Another critical aspect is about ensuring regular updates of the software and following industry best practices. This is important to stay updated with the latest technological advancements and trends other healthcare practices are implementing and simultaneously benefit from such updates.

Considering all these aspects, healthcare facilities must employ the best EHR solutions providers for their EHRs.

Electronic health records (EHRs) that are the digital version of paper charts of healthcare providers play a critical role in maintaining the health records of patients. The EHRs provide real-time and patient-centric records that are easily accessible by the authorized people who include physicians, healthcare staff, and the patients. Since electronic health records have comprehensive information about a patient’s health history collected from various healthcare providers whom the patient approached, they give a complete view of the patient’s health status and help the physicians make accurate and informed decisions with regard to investigations and treatment.

In the hard times, people are facing these days due to coronavirus disease, healthcare providers are under pressure to provide quality healthcare, and for this, it becomes essential to share data effectively. For this, it is necessary for healthcare providers to adapt to the changing needs of patient care. Here, the EHR systems play a crucial role in sharing accurate data in real-time.

With a sudden rise in the demand for hospital care and capacity, many healthcare providers are facing challenges in quickly arranging hospital management software at various alternative care locations set up to meet the increased healthcare requirements. It is observed that due to the various rules and regulations in place for setting up EHR systems and interoperability issues between different vendor-specific systems, healthcare facilities are encountered with hindrances in sharing critical medical information of patients.

To tackle these issues and use EHRs effectively, healthcare facilities should build and increase department units in the software, broaden Wi-Fi facilities, arrange additional hardware as required, arrange printers and other peripheral as necessary, and finally ensure that all these are working fine. For all these tasks, healthcare facilities need to have robust IT teams that can pull off their responsibilities within stringent deadlines and under pressure.

Healthcare facilities are hiring new staff to meet the demand created by the pandemic and this requires that the EHR systems are updated with the details of new employees who can access them and change the roles of other authorized people if needed. The present pandemic has created a need for the EHRs to work and provide results as intended and it is more so important now than ever before.

The coronavirus pandemic has not only increased the need for healthcare at facilities but also created a surge in the use of telehealth. Patients who are dealing with numerous ailments have to be cared for and it is in the best interest of both the patients and the facilities to treat them remotely to avoid crowding at facilities and reduce the risk of spreading the virus by staying back home. Telehealth has become a key method to address the health concerns of many people from a distance. In this scenario, it becomes vital for healthcare facilities to integrate telehealth with EHRs to provide seamless quality care.

For all those healthcare facilities that have not adopted EHRs and those that do not have capabilities to tackle this situation effectively with EHRs, this is the time to build up their EHR systems and ensure that they are well integrated with telehealth as well.

We are coming across terms like EMRs and EHRs often due to the U.S. healthcare industry’s transition from manual record-keeping to digital record-keeping. All the hospitals, clinics, nursing facilities and physician offices are moving towards electronic record-keeping with huge investments in the software and training pertaining to these records. Many people knowingly or unknowingly use both the terms of electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic medical records (EMRs) interchangeably. But, these two terms mean different things and let us see how they are distinct.

EHRs:

Electronic health records are the digital version of patient charts inclusive of patients’ medical history. This means the EHR systems help various healthcare providers to save and organize a patient’s health information and it can be accessed by any authorized healthcare provider. They are aimed at making healthcare more easily accessible by providing the patients’ information to the authorized persons instantly from anywhere in the world.

EMRs:

Electronic medical records are also a digitalized version of patient charts with a narrower scope. Electronic medical records contain only the treatment history of a patient in one particular practice. The EMRs are used by physicians mostly for diagnosis and treatment. EMRs are not easily accessible and they can’t be accessed by anyone out of the facility that provides treatment to a patient. In the cases, where records are required to be shared with a specialist, a copy of the record is printed out and mailed.

Practices that want to invest in the EHR systems, digital version of paper charts, need to understand the difference between EHRs and EMRs and then make the investment to make it successful.

Scope

• EHRs are comprehensive records of the health information of a patient.
• EMRs are records of treatment provided to a patient at a particular practice.

Sharing

• Electronic health records facilitate the sharing of updated and real-time patient information.
• EMRs are not designed to share information out of a facility.

Access

• Any authorized person including the patient can access the information from anywhere and anytime.
• Only the facility has access to the information for diagnosis and treatment purposes.

EHRs are more beneficial because of the data they contain and how they can be easily shared. EHR systems facilitate easy access of the patient data across healthcare providers making it easier for them to make informed decisions regarding patient treatment. Moreover, implementing EHR solutions is also mandatory to meet the ‘Meaningful Use’ requirements, a Medicare and Medicaid program supporting the use of electronic health records for the improvement of patient care. Considering EHRs are the future of healthcare, every healthcare facility should implement EHRs.

Electronic health records (EHRs) provide real-time patient records and aid in providing higher-quality healthcare and ease the work of patients and healthcare providers alike. They are the better version of the patients’ paper charts that contain the medical and treatment histories of the patients. With the advent and enormous use of information technology in all spheres of life, it has become easier for both patients and healthcare providers to record and access critical patient information at their fingertips. Implementation of EHR systems offers wider benefits than just the collection and maintenance of patient data.

EHRs are a crucial aspect of the health information technology containing patients’ medical history along with the diagnoses, treatments, immunization dates, allergies, tests and laboratory reports to provide easy access to patient data to the healthcare providers enabling them to make appropriate and timely decisions about patient care. Healthcare facility providers should automate and streamline the implementation of EHR solutions to authorize healthcare providers and other people concerned to access information in the digital format and share it with other healthcare providers if needed.

Electronic health records can be categorized into two categories – server-based and cloud-based. The server-based EHRs are the records that are stored on a network’s local server wherein everything related to the EHR systems is stored on the facility’s hardware. Cloud-based EHRs are the records that are stored on a third-party-operated remote server which is facilitated by a vendor.

• Server-based EHRs: Also called On-Premise EHRs, for these, the hardware, software and data are stored on servers at the facility’s location. The responsibility of maintaining, securing the servers, and taking backup regularly is on the healthcare facility. One of the pain points in choosing this type of EHR system is that huge investments have to be made initially on the hardware, software and location to maintain the server, etc. Thereafter, maintenance costs are also unavoidable.
• Cloud-based EHRs: In these types of EHRs, the location and hardware are owned by a third-party that provides its services by offering software and storage space for your EHR system. Here, the onus of maintenance of the hardware and regular backups is on the vendor. The benefit of implementing this kind of EHRs is that facilities need not make an upfront investment for the hardware requirements and services can be availed on lease with a monthly fee. However, the disadvantage with these is that they are dependent on internet connectivity.

Both server-based and cloud-based EHRs have their own advantages and disadvantages. Depending on its investment and human resources capabilities, a facility should decide as to what kind of EHRs it would go for and choose the best EHR solutions.